WASHINGTON - The top economic adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Wednesday Romney would consider keeping Ben Bernanke on as chair of the Federal Reserve, but said the central bank has at times "politicized itself."
Asked about Bernanke, Glenn Hubbard, dean of the Columbia Business School, said in an interview on CNBC, "it would strike me as unusual that he wouldn't be on such a list."
Bernanke's second term as Fed chair ends January 31, 2014, and his term as governor ends January 31, 2020.
Asked if the Fed has done a good job, Hubbard said, "I think that the Fed has done very big things, which means some of them will have succeeded and some of them not. The Fed's innovativeness in response to the financial crisis was very good."
But, Hubbard added, "At the same time the Fed certainly has gone to the outer bounds of policy, and in some cases has politicized itself.
"On balance, I think it would be very hard to criticize his performance," he said.
Asked if he disagreed with many Republican critics of the Fed, Hubbard said, "The Fed is certainly very controversial, and has put itself in that limelight and there will be lots of differences in opinion."
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